Inside City Hall
Inside City Hall: Spending before the Board of Estimates
In a meeting lasting five minutes today, the Board of Estimates approved more than $4 million in spending items to improve sanitation along the downtown waterfront, buy new street sweepers and maintain a computerized system for tracking homeless people.
The five-member board includes Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, City Council President Bernard C. “Jack” Young and City Comptroller Joan M. Pratt, all of whom attended the brief meeting at City Hall.
The items listed below were acted on collectively, without discussion, by the board. Before the vote, Deputy Comptroller B. Harriette Taylor announced several abstentions by board members, which are included below.
• $406,000 over four years to Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore, a non-profit that provides “clean teams,” landscaping, event management and hospitality guides for the Inner Harbor, including maintenance of the Walter Sondheim Fountain. (Mayor Rawlings-Blake and Comptroller Pratt abstained from voting on this item.)
• $125,575 to Municipal Information Systems Inc. to maintain the “Baltimore Homeless Services server” for the Mayor’s Office of Human Services. Based in St. Louis, MISI specializes in “crafting service delivery strategies and winning the battle to end homelessness,” according to its website.
In addition to maintaining the server, “MISI will also evaluate, select and subcontract with a qualified Internet service provider to provide local Internet access to users of the data system (as necessary) and provide four on-site training sessions to staff during the period of the agreement,” which lasts through March 31, 2012.
• $57,377 to Prisoner’s Aid Association of Maryland to operate transitional housing for about 16 homeless female ex-offenders, and $57,593 to Women Accepting Responsibility to provide tenant-based housing for four clients.
• $315,000 through June 2012 to Live Baltimore Home Center (better known as Live Baltimore) that markets the “I ♥ city life” bumper stickers. The non-profit says it will use the money to “implement programs that will market Baltimore City by promoting the benefits of Baltimore City living to current residents and potential city residents.” (Mayor Rawlings-Blake abstained from voting.)
• $2,228,880 to Maryland Industrial Trucks Inc. for 12 new Elgin street sweepers. This is on top of $742,960 awarded on January 19, 2011, making the total contract for new street sweepers $2,971,840.
• $1.5 million to Maryland Industrial Trucks for parts and service for Elgin sweepers and Vactor Sewer Vacs through November 2012. Since 2008, Maryland Industrial Trucks has received $4.2 million for servicing city sweepers under this contract.
• $333,222 to EMA Inc. to help design and procure automatic meter reading equipment for the bureau of water and wastewater. “EMA Inc. will negotiate vendor contracts and finalize plans for vendor requests and proposals, quality assurance, maintenance and city staff training,” according to board records. (City Council President Young abstained from voting.)
• $146,556 to URS Corp. to undertake “on-call” studies for the city Department of Transportation of potential commercial trucking routes and routing technologies.
• $103,000 to S.T.A.R. Associates Inc. to provide additional transportation for the Hooper Adult Daycare Center operated by the city Health Department. (Comptroller Pratt abstained from voting.) Since 2008, S.T.A.R. has received $622,250 for handling transportation at the Hooper Center.
• $100,000 to E.J. Ward for parts and service on E.J. Ward CANceivers, a fuel management and vehicle fleet data system.
• $140,500 to KCI Technologies, FTI Consulting and Environmental Resources Management to review the cost and work needed to clean up the 68th Street Dumpsite, a 239-acre parcel in Rosedale, Baltimore County, once used to dump waste. Under a 2006 agreement with the Environmental Protection Agency, Baltimore is one of 22 companies and governments working with EPA to clean up the Superfund site.
• $47,000 to the Abell Foundation and $10,000 to the Henry and Ruth Blaustein Rosenberg Foundation “to conduct activities to reduce teen pregnancy by providing age-appropriate and evidence-based health education and clinical services for young people.”